NSA Director Defends Surveillance Activities During Tense Black Hat Keynote
NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander defended the agency’s surveillance of Americans during a tense Black Hat USA 2013 keynote.
Privacy
Pinterest Announces Support for DNT Header
Pinterest said it will support the Do Not Track header as part of an announcement that it is expanding its data collection efforts.
EFF: Forced Decryption Violates Fifth Amendment
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an Amicus Brief to a United States District Court yesterday that could impact rulings around forced device decryption and whether that is an act of self-incrimination, and is protected by the Fifth Amendment.
A small group of Congressmen is trying to cut off the funding for the NSA’s widespread collection of phone and Internet records under the “business records” collection provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Congress is mad.
Maybe it’s the heat. Or maybe it’s them wanting to get it all out of their systems before the August recess. But whatever the case, there are some genuinely angry politicians in Washington right now, trying to figure who they should yell at next for making them deal with the fallout from the leaks perpetrated by Edward Snowden.
Incensed at the way that the Department of Justice and the intelligence community have used the controversial section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday angrily questioned Justice and NSA officials about their surveillance of U.S. citizens and said that when section 215 expires in two years, it won’t be renewed.
Privacy advocates called out rapper/entrepreneur Jay-Z this week, filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over an app he released earlier this month that some critics feel goes overboard in amount of the information it requests from its users.
Microsoft, responding to allegations that the company has helped the NSA circumvent encryption in Skype and Outlook.com and provided direct access to data from those and other services, says that it does none of those things and is petitioning the government for permission to publish more information about how it handles requests for customer data from government agencies.
The EFF has sued the NSA over its PRISM and metadata collection programs revealed by Edward Snowden.
Dennis Fisher talks with Chris Soghoian of the ACLU about the NSA surveillance leaks, the PRISM data collection program, the lack of good privacy options for consumers and his upcoming talk at DEF CON on government hacking operations.
